From typewriters to touchscreens: Three decades with the Observer

I started in early 1996, joining as a Staff Reporter when the Oman Daily Observer was still published out of the Oman Newspaper House building in Ruwi, a single-storey structure with an expansive basement housing a printing press complex. It was a pretty rudimentary setup - well before the advent of computers, laptops, digital screens and smartphones. The keyboarding devices of choice were traditional typewriters, mainly Remington and Underwood - clunky machines that made quite a racket as we put words to paper, with a bottle of white correction fluid or a correction pen always close at hand.

Our move to a spacious, stylish and modern complex at Madinat Al Ilam in 1999, following the establishment of OEPPA under Royal Decree No 43/97 on June 25, 1997, marked a leap forward in time and technology. Personal computers, initially with their bulky cathode-ray tube screens, began adorning every workstation. Reporting output grew dramatically as well, as a rapidly modernising country embraced the importance of media and communications as equally important bedrocks of national growth and prosperity. Daily newspaper coverage was supplemented by the periodic publication of special pullouts, supplements, magazines and annual publications — a trend that continues to this day.

Reporting in those early years was far more than just a content-writing chore. Many of us were chronicling Oman's development in real time. Some of the infrastructure and economic projects that are today landmarks of the country's economic progress materialised before our very eyes, from the blueprint stage through construction to commissioning. I recall with pride covering several of these landmark developments from the time they were first conceptualised: Port of Salalah, Sohar Refinery, Oman LNG, Sohar Port and Freezone, Sohar Aluminium, and Crowne Plaza Duqm, which presaged the development of Port of Duqm, Duqm Refinery and much more.

Another highlight of those early years, well before digital archives, Internet resources, online libraries and Google became ubiquitous, was the opportunity we reporters had to document Oman's tourist, cultural, archaeological, natural and geological attractions by venturing deep into the farthest reaches of the Sultanate of Oman, long before modern road networks crisscrossed the country. We engaged directly with local shaikhs, elderly villagers and craftspeople to gain first-hand accounts of life in their communities before modernisation took root.

These past three decades have been one seamless, long journey of learning, excent, discovery, wisdom, enrichment and reward - and a source of deep affection for and connection to Oman.

A new generation of young, savvy Omanis has since seamlessly and enthusiastically taken over the reins at the Observer, building on the foundations laid by their predecessors. The future has never looked brighter for the newspaper, and on this anniversary of its founding, I extend my warmest congratulations and best wishes to its current leadership and team.